.Dog washed out to sea by tsunami for three weeks on rooftop, reunited happily with owner. Check out the clip - it's wonderful!.

.Here we have Maku the dog being reunited with his human family after the Japanese Tsunami and Earthquake. A short but beautiful clip! To help save and reunite other animals affected by these disasters please check out Japan Earthquake Animal Rescue and Support Website.

INSPIRATIONAL FARM SANCTUARY

.Three happy, grateful baby animals get a new chance at life! Saved by the Farm Sanctuary!

The
study involved ruffling the feathers of chicks with puffs of air. The
chicks showed signs of distress at having their feathers ruffled and the
mother hens mirrored their stress. The researchers were able to
document equivalent signs of physiological distress in the mothers when
they observed that their chicks were bothered.

Scientists documented increased heart rate and alertness as well as lowered eye temperature, all signs of distress in chickens.

This
study shows that the animals that we most often slaughter for food are
capable of not only feeling pain and fear for themselves, but are also
capable of being terrified at what they are seeing happening to others
around them. In the United States we kill almost 9 billion chickens for food annually,
which doesn't even count male chicks killed at birth and egg-laying
hens confined in cages their whole lives. Compare that number to only
around 100 million cattle slaughtered for beef.

Once again many
are missing the point in saying that this study creates an imperative
for so-called "better welfare" on farms and in slaughterhouses when what
it creates is an even greater imperative to stop slaughtering animals
for food entirely.

We don't need friendlier and "happier"
slaughterhouses, we need no slaughterhouses. We don't need compassion in
animal agriculture, we need to end animal agriculture.

Every
step of the way we learn more about animals and how much they are like
us and we struggle to continue justifying the fact that we treat animals
like property instead of sentient beings.

We've proven that
chickens feel empathy with the suffering of others, the only thing left
is for us to prove that we as humans feel empathy for the suffering of
chickens and other animals..

.The squirrel above is fending off the crows to protect the body of its dead friend. Squirrels are vegetarian but occasionally will eat ants and other bugs but not animals, so this squirrel is not protecting a food source. ..

Information supplied by VoicelessYesterday, a group of animal and veterinary
scientists published a full page advertisement in The Australian admonishing
Coles for their recent policy decision to stock only hormone growth promotant
(HGP)-free beef and to phase out pork sourced from gestation crates (small metal
cages in which pregnant pigs are confined). The ad was bankrolled by Animal
Health Alliance, a veterinary pharmaceutical industry lobby group. Their
criticism of Coles is based on the premise that Coles' policies may "harm the
environment and animals" and that, for example, gestation crates "favour the
well-being" of the animals.

Voiceless strongly refutes the claims made in the
advertisement, on scientific and ethical grounds. In a bid to provide
Australians with the truth, Voiceless has prepared the following opinion. Sydney
Morning Herald Online will be publishing a version of this opinion over the next
few days. We will continue to monitor breaking news on this issue. Please check
our website for updates.

Brian Sherman AM
HonLittD is co-founder and MD of animal protection think tank Voiceless. Dr
Annemarie Jonson is Voiceless's head of communications and a writer on ethics
and technology.

The grocery retail giant Coles has unjustly come
under heavy fire recently from a group led by Ian Lean, adjunct professor of
veterinary science at the University of Sydney and managing director of SBScibus
– “formerly known as Strategic Bovine Services and Cattle Production
Consultants”.

Lean has claimed that Coles’ policy to stock only hormone
(HGP)-free beef, and to phase out pork sourced from pigs in gestation crates
(small metal cages), is “bad for the environment” and “bad for animals”.

His views have now been echoed in a major advertising campaign mounted
together with his colleagues, and bankrolled by the so called "Animal Health
Alliance". This is a veterinary pharmaceutical lobby group whose members include
major manufacturers of HGPs used in beef production.

Notably, HGPs are
banned in Europe.

The ad campaign has denounced Coles’ animal welfare
policies as a “threat to the sustainable and ethical production of food”. Move
over George Orwell. To those of us without a vested interest in animal
agribusiness, this “threat” is doublespeak for an encouraging movement in the
right direction by Coles.

Take for example the view of Clive Phillips,
Professor of Animal Welfare at the University of Queensland and Voiceless
Scientific Councillor. Phillips has said of HGPs, “These growth promoters are
most effective in intensive feedlot systems for cattle, and with a rapidly
expanding world population we should be moving to more sustainable systems that
don’t use large quantities of cereal grain in cattle feed. The risks to the
environment, and to animal welfare, are not worth the small improvement in
growth efficiency that HGPs provide.”

On the animal welfare issue there
is scientific evidence that HGPs dramatically reduce their resting time. HGPs
make cattle more susceptible to climatic extremes, increasing the risk, for
example, of heat stress. According to the RSPCA, in addition to the welfare
risks that intensive feedlot systems already pose for cattle, the side effects
of HGPs include infection at the site of the implant, aggressiveness,
nervousness and rectal prolapse. A 2008 study cited by the RSPCA found evidence
of “chronic stress conditions” in HGP implanted cattle.

But HGPs are
just one technology used in intensive farming. Gestation crates are a case in
point of the worst aspects of the industry. Extraordinarily, Lean and his
colleagues claim in their advertising campaign that gestation crates “favour
animal well-being".

Gestation crates, also known as sow stalls, are
metal cages, often with concrete or slatted floors, in which female breeding
pigs are individually confined for much of their adult life. These cages are
only slightly larger than the pig’s body, meaning this intelligent creature is
unable to even turn around. Confined sows show repetitive bar-biting and
head-waving, apathy and depression. They suffer from poor physical health
including skin ulcerations, reduced muscle mass, bone strength and
cardiovascular health, joint damage, urinary infections and gastrointestinal
problems. They are unable to exercise any of their natural behaviours, which
include ranging over many kilometres to build a nest for their young, separating
their area for defecation, and rooting in natural materials with their snout. If
you kept your dog like this you would potentially be subject to criminal
prosecution.

The relevant science on both the welfare and reproductive
performance of pigs does not support the continued use of individual sow stalls.
The eminent members of the EU’s Scientific Veterinary Committee concluded that,
“since overall welfare appears to be better when sows are not confined
throughout gestation, sows should preferably be kept in groups”.

Internationally, there is a wave of change away from the intensive
animal production systems, like gestation crates, which cause the greatest
suffering. The UK banned sow stalls in 1999. The EU has banned sow stalls
(except for the first four weeks of pregnancy) from 2013 and in the US, sow
stalls have been banned in a number of states including California, Michigan and
Florida. Closer to home, New Zealand and Tasmania have also committed to banning
sow stalls. Even our pork industry’s peak body, Australian Pork Limited,
announced last year that it will phase out sow stalls by 2017. The Australian
government is still the international laggard. Voiceless is now calling on the
Commonwealth to follow industry’s lead and revise the Model Code of Practice for
Pigs to ban these unconscionable cages.

Lean and his colleagues deride
the “emotion” that motivates those concerned with animals and their wellbeing,
saying we must have recourse only to the “science”. But as consumers
increasingly make animal-friendly choices, they are showing that “emotion” – in
other words, compassion toward animals – is not so easily disregarded.
Compassion is central to community values, and a touchstone of our better human
natures. And happily, emotion and science are entirely in agreement. As we know
and feel instinctively, and as the scientific research shows, intensive farming
is generally bad for animals.

The truth is that Coles, and other major
retailers like Woolworths, have seen the writing on the wall and are responding
positively. They are making strategic decisions on supply chain that extend
"ethical sourcing", which is an integral facet of corporate responsibility
programs, to embrace both animal welfare and increasing consumer preference
toward animal-friendly products. So too, with less fanfare, is Woolworths. It
removed cage eggs from its in-house Select brand in 2009, has introduced several
free-range deli lines (which have shown extraordinary sales growth), and is
sourcing about 40 percent of its pork from non-sow stall production systems.

We, as a community are starting to see the farm animal as a sentient
being, with capacities like our own, including complex social and family
behaviours, intelligence and a wide range of emotions. Basic human decency
demands that we take seriously these animals’ needs to be free of suffering, and
to exercise their rich behavioral repertoires. Ian Lean and his colleagues in
animal agribusiness would do well to reflect on this. But don’t take it from us.
Take it from a scientist. As Einstein wrote: “our task must be to free ourselves
from the prison house” of our personal desires by “widening the circle of
compassion to embrace all living creatures”.

At
the University of Wisconsin, a neuroscientist was studying attention
deficit disorder with rhesus macaque monkeys when he noticed them
studying themselves in the mirror -- including the "saltshaker sized"
implants he had screwed into their skulls during the course of his
study.

The ability of an animal to recognize itself in a mirror
is a sign of self-awareness. Originally only humans were thought to be
self-aware, but a number of other animals have proven themselves to be
self-aware, including chimpanzees and dolphins.

The procedure for
checking for self-awareness involves making a mark on an unconscious
animal's face and then allowing the animal to examine herself in a
mirror. If she recognizes the mark on her own face, then she is thought
to be self-aware.

The "mark test" as it is called, has been
called insufficient by some scientists to measure self-awareness. The
type of monkey in the UW study, the macaque has always failed the mark
test, but the new evidence from the researchers at UW and the videos
they've taken seem to suggest there is a gradient of self-awareness and
not an all-or-nothing measurement.

Other scientists have suggested the idea of a spectrum of self-awareness, including a primatologist at Emory University.

Other
scientists, including the researcher who invented the mark test, are
skeptical and say there may be other explanations for the monkeys'
behavior.

In the midst of this debate about the validity of the
observations is the debate about the implications of the results.
Ostensibly in the vivisection community there is a line between what
they consider to be lower animals without self-awareness and animals
like chimps. According to a scientist at UW who was not involved in the
study: "There are decisions I would make with a monkey, that I would not
feel comfortable making with a chimpanzee".

We've learned time
and again, however, that even the treatment afforded to the "more
humanlike" animals is still cruel, disgusting and inhumane. The
researcher who made the discovery voiced his hope that this new
information wouldn't spell the end of research on macaques.

One
cannot help but cringe at the irony: a researcher accidentally discovers
that the monkeys he's torturing are smarter than anyone had given them
credit for. He simultaneously argues the monkeys are self-aware and that
in spite of that information, it's imperative we continue testing on
them.

If we can acknowledge that maybe self-awareness
isn't an all-or-nothing phenomenon, and recognize that it is a spectrum,
then we can hopefully make the logical next step in realizing that
justifying any animal suffering based on their abstract mental capacity
has no moral basis.

Being self-aware to a certain arbitrary
degree shouldn't be an animal's ticket out of torture and
experimentation because that kind of treatment of animals shouldn't
exist to begin with..

Alexander, Blitzen and Lawrence: Baby Animals Rescued and Happy!

There is no question that some of the most dismal scenes unfold at
stockyard auctions across the U.S. At these terrible weigh stations for
animals being sold by one party and purchased by another – some
heading into a life of production, others to slaughter – there isn’t
any compassion to be found, and suffering abounds to a staggering
degree. Here, labeled with numbers and pushed and prodded into chaotic
auction rings for bidding, terrified and confused farm animals of all
ages and conditions – from tiny babies to aging adults – are all
typically treated in the same callous manner until the sale is over and
they go on to meet some equally miserable end.

Since
Farm Sanctuary started 25 years ago, we have been rescuing animals from
these environments, nursing them to health, and giving them new,
better lives – starting with Hilda,
the now famous sheep who we lifted from a stockyard dead pile in 1986.
Late last year, with the help of members and supporters like you, we
rescued Riley

On
the day National Shelter Director Susie Coston discovered the calves,
she watched truck after truck filled with these baby animals drive up
to the auction yard. The newborns, some not even a day old yet, were
visibly frenzied and could be heard bawling for their mothers. But
while all Susie wanted to do was comfort them, their terror was only
met with frustration from the workers who forcefully unloaded and moved
them into holding pens by hitting them with canes or shocking them
with cattle prods. – a very sickly and partially blind piglet – from such a place, and,
most recently, found three newborn male dairy calves on the brink of
death at a large sale being held on one of the most bitterly cold days
of winter.
.

.The scene turned even grislier when she came across the poor babies who
were obviously very ill. She found one – a little calf who couldn’t
even stand – collapsed and left freezing in the less than 20 degree
weather near a loading dock. The other two she would rescue that day
were shoved into the auction ring when the sale began. One was so sick
and weak that his legs kept buckling beneath him as workers prodded him
to get him on his feet. The other, weighing only 37 pounds, was so
small that the bidders made a joke of him – calling him “trash.”
Treated with the same indifference as all the others, these little ones
were only mocked in their distress and ultimately deemed as being
worthless when they failed to sell for even $1.

Stepping
in to claim these three sweet babies when no one else would, Susie
rushed them to safety and ensured that they immediately began receiving
the emergency medical treatment they so desperately needed to have any
chance of survival. If she hadn’t shown up, there is no question that
these boys would have wound up in a garbage heap or the grip of a
renderer, their suffering simply ignored. And if Farm Sanctuary
members and supporters like you hadn’t taken immediate action to help
us, they would certainly never be where they are today.

As generous donations to the Emergency Rescue Fund
came in from compassionate people like you to provide them with the
care they needed to have fighting chance at life, the calves, since
named Alexander, Blitzen and Lawrence, started on the long road to
recovery:

Blitzen,
the smallest baby, was initially taken to the Cornell University
Hospital for Animals with the other two calves, but since he was very
active and alert despite having pneumonia, he was sent home after
receiving a physical and having blood drawn. Because he and the other
babies were denied the nutrients in their mother’s vital colostrum,
they had very low protein levels. As a result, Blitzen’s immunity was
low and he later had to return to the hospital for a plasma transfusion
to provide him with the antibodies he needed to fight off illness.
After this, he was placed on antibiotics, but continued to spike high
fevers and was not gaining weight, which caused us great concern.
Thankfully, after a third trip to the hospital and a second transfusion,
he is finally gaining weight, but we are still keeping a close eye on
him to monitor his progress.

Lawrence,
the calf who was downed at the auction and the one we were most
worried about initially, has surprised us all by rallying and doing the
best health-wise out of the three. He finished his treatments for
pneumonia earlier this month, and, while he was in renal failure upon
arrival at Cornell, the condition was successfully reversed thanks to
the intensive care unit there. Test results also showed that Lawrence
had salmonella, but that is now under control as well.

Alexander, the largest calf, sadly, had
the most health issues of the bunch. Because he did not have the
chance to receive colostrum from his mother and received no basic care
from humans after birth (his umbilical cord was not treated with iodine
to prevent infection), he contracted a severe navel infection that had
spread to his leg joints and was treated with IV antibiotics. But
after returning home following a course of treatments, Alexander’s
condition did not continue to improve, so he returned to the hospital
for a critical surgery to remove the infection. During the procedure,
the doctors also discovered a bone cyst and chip on one his legs. While
Alexander is still at Cornell now, we are very hopeful that he will be
able to start enjoying sanctuary life soon.

.If it weren’t for the support of friends like you, none of these sweet
babies would be receiving the vital care they need to begin new lives
and have the chance to just be themselves. Despite all they have been
through, the trio remain in good spirits and are exceptionally loving
and playful, craving attention from their many admirers at every turn.
They are an absolute joy to know, and we hope one day all of you will
have the chance to meet the very special calves you helped save.

Together, we are piercing the darkness suffering farm animals
endure every day and shining a light on their plight so it might be
changed in time with each person we enlighten and each life we touch. We are their only hope, and you have shown that you are there for them. Thank you!